The New Confessions (5 page)

For a while I hung around Thompson, while he was in his mid-teens and I was approaching double figures. I was not welcome. He tolerated me, no more. Anyway, as he entered his final year at school his extracurricular activities took up much of his time. He was captain of his
school debating society and was prominent in one of the quasi-religious, paramilitary organizations for boys (I forget which) that seem to proliferate in Scottish cities. He was a sedulous churchgoer for some years (my father was not) and I remember him going on trips to convocations or rallies. Once to Birmingham and once, I think, to Antwerp.

Looking back on Thompson’s indifference I wonder if it was a subconscious resentment of me, like my father’s. Thompson had been six when his adoring mother was taken away and replaced by a bawling baby brother. Did he, somewhere in his being, blame me for this crucial deprivation? My mother’s death was the start of all my misfortunes. Possibly it made Thompson what he was, and what he is today: a cold, selfish, conceited philistine without a drop of fraternal affection in his body. And very rich.

So I was left largely to my own devices: Oonagh, my rare friends, my hobby. I wonder what I did before I got my camera? Played with Oonagh, I suppose. She always seemed to be there with young Gregor—her last child, as it turned out. Should I tell you anything more about Gregor?… I treated him rather as Thompson treated me. In fact, Oonagh showed me more kindness than she did her own child. She called Gregor “snotty-beak”—he seemed always to be in the grip of a ferocious cold, summer and winter, his top lip glossy with phlegm. Gregor.… It seems hardly worth it. He drifted out of my life shortly after. Later I heard he married, joined the merchant navy. Is he still alive? Are you out there, Gregor?… Gregor need not concern us; he was around then, that was all, and he is one of the few people in my life to whom I bear no ill will.

Oonagh. Oonagh was the tender nexus of my universe, although I never reflected on it at the time. When I arrived home from school, breathless from the hike up from the station, it was into the kitchen that I turned.

“Here he is,” she would say and that would be it. I would sit down, my plate would be set in front of me and we would take up our conversation from where it had been left off.

Around the time I learned about Donald Verulam and my mother—the summer of 1912—there was a slight but discernible shift in the relationship between me and Oonagh. By then she must have been in her mid-thirties, still a handsome strong woman, her protruding eyes as restless and shrewd as ever. She moaned with more regularity about the cold, her back, the doings of her offspring. We had had the electric light
installed in the apartment now, and what with Thompson and my father more often out than in, her duties were not onerous.

What brought on this change? One day, one week, one month something was different, that is all I can say. She was more guarded, that is the best I can express it. Our easy discourse continued but now I seemed to sense a watchfulness behind it that had not been present before. Why? It was my growing older, I am sure. She missed nothing, and perhaps she sensed one moment the first adult glance I bestowed upon her, felt in my love for her the undertow of carnality. At thirteen I was counting every pubic hair as it appeared, scrutinizing my chin and armpits. I was a rapt participant in the usual trade of smut and sniggers at school. I once barged into Thompson’s room one morning to find his bed a small thrumming tent, Thompson’s eyes firmly shut, an urgent pout of pleasure on his lips. I knew what he was doing. I had been trying it avidly, vainly, myself. So was it the shadow of the adult that fell between Oonagh and myself? In any event, things were never entirely, unreflectingly the same between us again.

“Oonagh?”

“Aye?”

“Do you know Mr. Verulam?”

“Aye.”

“What do you think of him?”

“Well … I don’t think much of him.”

“Why not?”

“He’s English, isn’t he? Do I need another reason? Daft laddie.”

“Did, ah, did my mother like him?”

“I haven’t a notion. Now, get out of here, ’fore I dot you.”

I did not believe her for a moment, and her evasiveness confirmed my now burgeoning suspicions. She disliked him because she knew something had gone on. I was aware too that I would get nothing further from her. I needed another source of information and I had a good idea where I could get it—Mrs. Faye Hobhouse, my mother’s younger sister.

Faye was two years younger than my mother but had married earlier. Her husband was an Englishman, Vincent Hobhouse, a solicitor and magistrate, who lived and practiced in Charlbury, a small town near Oxford in the Windrush Valley. Faye had a look of my mother, but was taller, with a slightly ungainly pear-shaped figure. She had a pretty, even-featured face, which was given a further louche attractiveness by
her heavily shadowed eyes. She always looked as if she had not slept for three days, no matter how bright and alert her demeanor. It seemed to indicate another, covert side to her personality: a latent promise of depravity beneath the veneer of dutiful wife and mother. In due time I came to find almost everything about her—her heavy hips, her small breasts, her dun curly hair—almost overpoweringly attractive.

We did not see much of her and Vincent Hobhouse, or her three children, my cousins—Peter, Alceste and Gilda. I remember only two visits before this summer of 1912. They came in early August. Vincent Hobhouse had taken a lodge near Fort William for a shooting party. Vincent had one of the fettest faces I have ever seen, a prodigious jowl making his head quite round. From the front you could not see his collar, not even the knot of his tie. I often found myself wondering how he tied it in the morning, imagining him having to lie on his back across a bed, his head lolling over the edge like a corpse’s to allow his fingers unimpeded access to his throat. He was a quiet, charming man, prone to melancholy. He had always been stout but apparently after his wedding he had blown up like an abbot. I could never understand why he ate and drank as much as he did; it seemed quite contrary to his nature. He and Faye were an oddly matched couple but they seemed ideally content.

Faye took a genuine affectionate interest in my welfare, rather spoiling me in fact, and, unlike the other members of my family, never giving rise to any suspicion that she blamed me for my mother’s death. Indeed, I heard later that she had offered to adopt me, but my father had declined, averring that he and Oonagh could be trusted with my upbringing.

One evening, while they were staying with us, I showed Faye my camera and some of my photographs.

“They’re splendid, John. Look at them, Vincent, they’re extraordinary!”

“Good Lord,” Vincent Hobhouse said, quite astonished. He looked at me with new respect. “Why don’t you take up something like that?” he said to his son, Peter (two years older than me, a perfect snob, I thought). They occupied themselves with the prints. I turned back to Faye, watching closely.

“I was taught by Donald Verulam,” I said quietly.

A perceptible flinch.

“Oh … Donald Verulam?”

“You’ve met him, Faye, I’m sure,” my father said. Faye glanced over at her husband. “Colleague of mine. Known him for years.”

“Yes, I think I must have,” she said quickly. “I … I think with Emmeline once.”

My mother’s name occasioned the usual subliminal tremor. It was more than I could have hoped for.

The next day we saw them off on the train for Fort William. Vincent supervised the porters loading their luggage, guns and hampers. I stood by Faye.

“Why don’t you write to me, John?” she said. “I’d love to hear how you’re getting on.”

“I’m afraid my spelling’s useless.”

“So’s mine. Doesn’t matter a jot.”

“Well … all right.” I paused. “Aunt Faye … about Donald Verulam. You met him with my mother.”

“Yes.…” Odd expression. “They were good friends, now that I remember. She often mentioned him.”

“When?”

“In her letters mostly. She wrote to me every week, you know, Emmeline and I—for years.” She looked round. “I think we’re off.” She bent down and looked me in the eye.

“Why don’t you come and see us, Johnny? I’d love to get to know you better.” She cupped my cheeks with her hands. “Have you ever been to England?”

“Not yet.”

I looked into that kind face, those bruised, hinting eyes. She kissed my cheek. Her own cheek brushed mine, a powdery softness, a scent of some wildflower—musky, dry, promiscuous.

Donald Verulam and I sit in a tearoom on the High Street in Newhaven. We have spent the afternoon taking photographs of the fishermen and the fishwives around the little harbor. We drink tea, eat large slabs of bread and butter, potato scones and jam, waiting for the charabanc to take us back to Edinburgh.

Donald fills his cup from a heavy brown teapot. He has a slight frown—he seems to be thinking about something. He runs his hand over his head, smoothing down the few strands of hair on his pate. His face looks thinner, more ascetic than usual. He takes out his pipe, fills it with shag and lights it. Plumy smoke snorts from his nostrils.

On the chair beside us sit our cameras in their boxes (I have a new
Sanderson), the leather already much dulled and scarred from constant use, the corners bumped and softened. I spread raspberry jam on my bread and butter. The ligaments in my jaw crack audibly as I take a huge bite. Donald eases back in his chair, his pipe going well, crosses one corduroyed leg over the other and loosens his tie at his throat. One booted foot taps slightly to a hidden personal rhythm.

The lady who runs the tea shop approaches. She has a thin aristocratic face, her hair folded up on her head in an old-fashioned style. An agate brooch at her throat winks light as she passes through a wand of afternoon sun. Outside a dogcart clops by, a slow rumble of iron wheels on the cobbles. From the back garden comes the contented gurgling of hens.

“Will you be having any more tea, sir?” A nice voice—educated, soft.

“Thank you, no,” Donald says.

She glances at me.

“No, thanks.”

We all smile at each other. Donald goes, “Hmmmm …” I look out of the window. Opposite a sign reads:
W. & J
.
ANDERSON’S SMITHY, IRONMONGERY
. Someone walks by wheeling two empty milk churns in a barrow. A kind of buzzing tranquillity seems to fill my ears. I realize, consciously, for the first time ever, that I am happy. This moment is a watershed in anyone’s life. It is the beginning of responsibility.

“Mr. Verulam,” I say, “did you ever meet my mother’s sister, my aunt, Faye Hobhouse?”

“Faye Hobhouse?… Oh yes, Faye Dale. In fact I met her before I met your mother. Vincent was in my college at Oxford.”

The buzzing in my ears seems to have developed into a roar.

“When I got my job up here, Faye introduced me to your mother and father.”

I needed no more evidence. Here was a web of falsehood and duplicity. They were old friends. Why had Faye pretended not to know who he was? To spare my father’s blushes? There seemed, moreover, to be some complicity between the two sisters. I was confused. At the time, I was being led by instinct, only half-recognizing adult evasions. Had I been more worldly I might have asked if Donald Verulam had met my mother at Oxford. Maybe the two sisters had made trips there together to visit Faye’s beau? Or, conceivably, if Donald and Vincent were so thick, perhaps Donald had met my mother at Faye’s wedding?
But all I knew for sure then was that certain charges seemed to flow through the air whenever the conjunction of my mother’s name and Donald’s occurred. My adolescent antennae picked them up and they reinforced the romantic fantasy I entertained about myself. A stranger in his own home, out of step with his family, the profound reluctance—I had to admit to this now—of acknowledging Innes Todd to be my natural parent.

I felt strengthened by what I had discovered. Things had been unknowingly divulged that allowed me to face my future with more composure and self-esteem. I began to see myself as trameled up in a great doomed love affair. Perhaps the only two people who knew or guessed at the real truth were my mother and myself. The knowledge I possessed electrified me. For decorum’s sake the masquerade continued, and would continue for a while yet, but as we drove back to Edinburgh that hot windless August evening I felt convinced for the first time of my own uniqueness. I could live the lie of being John James Todd a little longer.

Does that seem unduly precocious? Of course it is, expressed in that way, but the sensations I experienced that evening were those exactly, if unarticulated.

I felt different from those around me. I felt I
thought
differently too. Different things affected me from those that affected others. My chancing upon the traces of Donald Verulam’s love affair with my mother merely explained the source of those feelings. It brought a certain calm, allowed me to face my troubled future with some equanimity.

My father and Thompson faced me across the dining table. Thompson was going up to the University and in anticipation had grown a moustache, a sorry, soft thing that he kept touching and stroking as if it were a pet. Paradoxically, it made him look younger.

We had eaten soup—mulligatawny—and Oonagh had just cleared away the fish—breaded mackerel—and was now bringing in the neck of veal when my father said, “We’ll have that in fifteen minutes, please, Oonagh.”

Oonagh glanced at me and backed out of the dining room. She could read the signs as well as I. I had thought something was wrong from the moment we sat down. My father gave nothing away, but Thompson kept looking expectantly at him and his remarks to me were untypically solicitous.

“How are we today, John James? Fighting fit?”

“
We’re
fine, thank you, Thompson. How’s our moustache?”

My bravado would normally have stung him. He just smiled complacently and began to eat his soup.

I knew what father was going to address me about. My entrance examination for the Royal High School, taken a week previously. I said nothing. We ate our first two courses in almost total silence. Then Oonagh was banished with the neck of veal. My father took a piece of paper from his waistcoat pocket.